We help you to implement and
establish R in your business.
Enterprise Software Development Services
We offer professional services that cover the entire life cycle of an R package:
- Requirements engineering with the result of a user requirements specification
- Software design: designing the architecture of the package
- Implementation: production of the source code
- Validation: documented testing and verification of the functionality; creation of a comprehensive validation documentation (compliant to FDA/GxP guidelines)
- Release: publication of the R package on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN)
- Maintenance: bug fixing, adaptation to the requirements of new R versions
- Documentation: creation of integrated help documents with Roxygen2 and creation of vignettes and case studies with R Markdown (Rmd)
- Extension: development of new features
- Improvement: optimization of the usability (user interface) and the performance, e.g., by translation of R code into C++ with Rcpp
- Development of graphical user interfaces with the R package Shiny
R Package Development Expertise
At the beginning of the project at the end of 2017 we developed
- An R package project development and management strategy
- “Clean Code” coding rules because contradictory recommendations exist in the R community, e.g., we use “lower camel case” for all functions and parameters
- The technical infrastructure to bring such a project to success in a small development team, e.g., Eclipse-based development environment, version control, bug tracking, project management, etc.
- Rules to structure an R package project: there exist no uniform recommendations yet for structuring a package and naming the source files
Since 2017, we have continuously expanded our expertise, e.g., we can fall back on a comprehensive development infrastructure with exclusive R packages, which we developed in parallel to the rpact package. Two of these exclusive R packages are desribed on the page Projects.
Learning and Training
We offer different kinds of courses, workshops and training materials:
- Book an rpact package training course; our RPACT SLA customers get one training per year for free
- Book a one-day or two-days rpact package training at a company site
- Book an R introductory workshop
- Ask for access to exclusive manuals, best practice descriptions, and vignettes
Support Services
- Technical software support for written support requests to RPACT´s hotline, incl. product questions, feature requests, and development issues
- Technical expert service support on demand to answer regulatory questions related to the rpact package
- Receiving, reviewing and responding to rpact bug reports
- Support with the installation qualification of rpact on company computer systems
Other Services
- Setup of a validated user environment with integration of the rpact package
- Customized design of the rpact package: development of company internal graphical user interfaces (using Shiny) with forms for the most frequently used rpact functions
- Automation: implementation of frequent workflows and processes
- Customer adaptions: "private" extensions, e.g. R programs for customer-specific needs which, e.g., use the rpact package
- Implementation of customer-specific sample programs
Service Level Agreement
Together with ten different pharmaceutical companies and CROs we worked out a standard service level agreement (SLA).
In this SLA are many benefits included at a flat rate, e.g.:
- Free-of-charge technical software support
- Annual one-day rpact package training meeting
- rpact package training at a company site
- Access to written know-how and documents dealing with the formal validation of the rpact package
- Review of user requirements specifications
- Review of training material
- Test of developer (beta) versions
- Involvement in planning of capabilities and extensions of the software functionality
- Provide feedback on usability in the drug development practice
